In various fields such as manufacturing of semiconductor integrated circuits such as a LSI, display faces of flat panel displays (FPDs), circuit substrates, color filters, and so on, photolithography technology has so far been employed for forming fine elements or conducting fine processing. In the photolithography technology, a positive- or negative-working photosensitive resin composition (photoresist composition) is used for forming a resist pattern.
By the way, a design rule is requiring recently by micronization from a half micron to a quarter micron or further finer in the microelectronic device manufacturing trade because of a high integration tendency and a high speed tendency of LSIs. In order to respond to the further micronization of such design rule, light-exposure sources so far applied such as a visible light or near ultra violet rays (wavelength; 400 to 300 nm) are not enough and it is becoming necessary to use deep ultra violet rays such as KrF excimer laser (wavelength; 248 nm), and ArF excimer laser (wavelength; 193 nm), an extreme ultra violet ray (EUV: wavelength; 13 nm) or a radiation having further shorter wavelength such as X-rays, electron beams and so on. Therefore, the lithography process using these light-exposure sources with shorter wavelengths has been proposed and is used in practice as a light-exposure source. In order to respond to micronization of this design rule, a photoresist having a higher resolution is being required. In addition, besides the resolution, improvements of performance such as sensitivity, a pattern shape, an accuracy of image dimension and so on are also required for the photoresist at the same time. For responding to such requirements, a chemically amplified photosensitive resin composition was proposed as a photosensitive resin composition having high resolution and high sensitivity, which is sensitive to shorter wavelength radiations. The chemically amplified photosensitive resin composition comprises, for example, a compound which can generate an acid by irradiation of radiation and a resin, polarity of which is increased by an acid. When the chemically amplified photosensitive resin composition is irradiated with radiation, an acid is generated from the acid generating compound and the polarity of the resin contained in the resist film is increased by a catalytic image formation process due to the acid generated. After this, when the resist film is developed with a developer having a high polarity (positive-type developer) such as aqueous alkaline solution, a positive image is formed and when developed with a developer having a low polarity (negative-type developer) such as an organic solvent, a negative image is formed (see Patent document 1 below).
However, as a micronization is proceeding, a problem of pattern collapse after development and rinsing in lithography process have been becoming apparent. This problem is seen notably when a patter with a high aspect ratio is formed. The aspect ratio is defined as a ratio of height of pattern to width of pattern. Specifically, it is thought that the pattern collapse is caused by that upon drying resist patterns after development, a negative pressure arises between neighboring patterns due to a surface tension of a rinse solution pooled between the neighboring patterns, the neighboring patterns are pulled in each other by the negative pressure, and differences of negative pressures generated between a plural number of neighboring patterns are caused at this time (see Patent document 2 below). From these points of view, for improving the pattern collapse when pure water with a high surface tension is used as a rinse solution, it is proposed to rinse by using not pure water but an aqueous rinse solution containing a nonionic surfactant (see Patent documents 3 to 6 below). A problem of pattern melting due to micronization of pattern, however, is shown remarkably in the known rinse solutions proposed conventionally.